REBEL RIDGE Review: Timely, Topical Suspense-Thriller

An often underappreciated, even undervalued director of brutal, violent suspense-thrillers, Jeremy Saulnier’s (Hold the Dark, Green Room, Blue Ruin) first film in six years, Rebel Ridge, uses familiar genre elements, specifically those associated with throwback "man on a mission"/"man against the system" films, including, but not limited to First Blood, Walking Tall, and Billy Jack.

In each film, a troubled, sometimes traumatized outsider with a 'very special set of skills' faces off repeatedly against corrupt representatives, often law enforcement, of a corrupt system and/or establishment, eventually fighting back with those same very special skills, meting out satisfyingly cathartic vigilante justice on corrupt representatives of said corrupt system (often, but not exclusively, members of local law enforcement).

Initially, Rebel Ridge doesn’t stray from that familiar formula (if it’s not broke, and so forth, centering its attention on Terry Raymond (Aaron Pierre), an ex-Marine martial arts instructor (i.e., a badass by any rational definition), as he attempts to bail out his recently imprisoned, soon-to-be-transferred cousin. Unsurprisingly, it’s a good deed that’s about to be punished.

Almost immediately, Raymond runs afoul of two of Shelby Springs, Louisiana’s least finest police officers, Evan Marston (David Denman) and Steve Lann (Emory Cohen). Neither takes kindly to a non-Caucasian stranger riding a bicycle through town and carrying approximately $36K in cold, hard cash.

Between the color of Richmond’s skin and the suspicious amount of cash he’s carrying (suspicious because of the color of his skin and not the content of his character), it’s all but a foregone conclusion that Richmond and the bail money will soon be parted. An initial attempt to convince the town’s chief, Sandy Burnne (Don Johnson), while superficially cordial, goes nowhere fast, leaving Richmond with an atypical conundrum: retrieving the bail money and freeing his cousin without the use of force or, if compelled to use force by external factors, using it as minimally as possible (i.e., disarm his opponents, not main or injure them).

Richmond finds a somewhat improbable, credibility-straining ally in a town clerk, Summer McBride (AnnaSophia Robb), while repeatedly trying to find a non-violent solution to the problems created by the forfeiture of his cousin’s bail money. He’s not just a highly trained Marine and combat expert, however, he’s also trained in the seemingly lost art of de-escalation.

Those techniques become a necessity both because of his loner, one-against-all status, but also due to the ever-present racial — or rather racist — undertones inherent in practically every interaction Richmond has in Shelby Springs. As a stranger and more importantly, a Black man moving through a predominantly white town, Richmond’s finely honed survival instincts keep him in a permanent state of heightened vigilance, ever mindful to counter the implicit racism and white fragility he encounters with just enough deference, tact, and unfailing politeness to avoid conflict.

Anchored by a moodily nuanced, suitably intense turn by Aaron Pierre as the thoughtful, calculating Richmond and uniformly strong turns by a supporting cast, Rebel Ridge takes a necessarily methodical, deliberate approach to the conflict between Richmond and the representatives of the town’s corrupt establishment. Long an expert at building and maintaining carefully calibrated suspense, Saulnier keeps everything on a slow-burning simmer, deftly outlining characters and personalities, interests and counter-interests, and putting them on a collision course that simultaneously never feels predictable yet always feels inevitable.  

Rebel Ridge is now streaming on Netflix.